WAKE OF I-695: Air quality program hopes for restored funding

OLYMPIA (AP) - When Washington voters passed Initiative 695 last month, cutting car-tab taxes to $30, they also blasted a huge hole in the budget of the state's air quality program.

Now, the program's leaders are gambling that the Legislature will restore their funding.

The program will go into deficit spending when I-695 takes effect Jan. 1 rather than lay off 84 of its 126 employees. Air quality managers are looking for the Legislature to approve Gov. Gary Locke's proposal to restore all $12.3 million the air quality program loses to I-695 cuts.

Air quality is not alone - other state and local agencies are taking the same gamble. King County Executive Ron Sims recently announced the county will hold off on cuts in Seattle-area bus service since Locke has proposed restoring $200 million in I-695 cuts in transit funding.

If they've bet wrong, and the Legislature doesn't follow the governor's plan to restore funding, these agencies will have to dig their way out of an even deeper budget hole due to deficit spending, and they'll be forced to make more drastic cuts.

"We are out of cash on January first," said policy analyst Stuart Clark, whose desk was covered last week with contingency charts and lists with headings such as "Worst Case Scenario under 695."

That scenario is unlikely, however, since both parties in the Legislature support restoring most, if not all, of the air quality budget.

Locke's proposal would restore $12.3 million, which would mean no cuts. House Co-Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, also said the air quality program is a priority. However, Ballard said that it, along with every other program and agency, should be scrutinized for possible efficiency-improving cuts.

The governor's budget prompted sighs of relief in the air quality office, which has been on edge since the passage of I-695. Most voters didn't know it, but included in the unpopular motor vehicle excise tax was a $2 fee that paid nearly half the air quality program's two-year, $33.3 million budget.

The air quality program measures air pollution, devises solutions to reduce it, enforces clean-air laws and evaluates whether different air-quality programs work.

If funding is not restored, there will be a lot of empty cubicles in the program's office. Nine of the 11 employees who enforce clean-air rules in 19 counties would be laid off. The number of people who design air-pollution solutions would drop from 25 to three.

All four employees who run the agricultural burning permit program would be laid off. Farmers would still be required to get permits to burn their fields, but there would be no one to issue the permits and no one to enforce the laws on illegal burning.

"With that kind of a cut, we can't deliver clean air," program manager Mary Burg said.

The prospect of air quality cuts have created strange bedfellows, such as farmers and environmentalists who usually are at odds.

The public will notice if air quality programs are cut, said Steve Garritson of Bothell, a Sierra Club air quality expert. If air pollution increases, he said, burn bans would become common in winter and drivers would likely be forced to use oxygenated gasoline, a cleaner-burning, more expensive fuel.

"Those are the kinds of things that would get people upset," he said. To Garritson's dismay, he said there's not much public support for clean-air programs in Washington, mostly because the air quality is relatively good.

"It's only when things get really tough - when you go outside and see the air (pollution), smell it - that you get support for air quality programs," he said.

— 12/31/1969

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